ОМОН: риалити шоу

Imagine this. OMON needs to improve its image.The Russian version of SWAT put on a show for over 100 journalists in Shchyolkovo-7 where the elite police special operations unit, Zubr, is based.The outdoor demonstration of OMON’s expertise and physical acumen was a cross between bad 1970s cop shows and Gymkata.The Moscow Times reports:

In one training exercise, masked officers abseiled headfirst down a four-story building, threw smoke grenades into a second-story window and then swung into the buildings through open windows, firing handguns and shouting.

In another exercise, some 15 officers formed a circle, then two-by-two stepped forward and squared off in a display of hand-to-hand combat. As the music blared, they demonstrated how to repel a knife-wielding attacker; how to disarm, flip and shoot an attacker in the head with his own rifle; and how to evade a kick to the head with a back-flip.

A third exercise was designed to highlight the obedience of OMON police dogs: a German Shepherd resisted the urge to attack a cat that was placed in front of it.

In its appeal to the media, the Interior Ministry appeared to acknowledge that the OMON’s reputation had been dented after its heavy-handed response to a number of opposition rallies earlier this year.

This is display that Deputy Interior Minister Mikhail Sukhodolsky hoped would convince the media to “cover the OMON more objectively”? Nice.

Related

Volgograd has a long history of violence. Originally Tsaritsyn, it was a key southern outpost founded in the 16th century to serve as the guardian of the Volga River and a gateway to the Caucasus. It location at the empire’s underbelly also meant it was repeatedly subject to attack. The peasant rebel Stenka Razin held it for a month in 1670, and it was repeatedly sacked by Cossack chieftains in the 18th century. But it is perhaps best known for the Battle of Stalingrad (the city was renamed for the Russian dictator in 1925), one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, resulting in 850,000 casualties and building-to-building fighting that reduced the city to rubble. The Red Army’s victory in February 1943 here turned the tide of World War II. This blood-soaked battle is so central to the city’s identity, in fact, that last year local officials ruled that every February, Volgograd would be renamed Stalingrad for six days to commemorate the victory.

Today, Volgograd has become a battleground yet again, but this time the military front lacks definition and the targets could be anyone. The enemy moves silently and the attacks are sudden and intermittent. They serve no strategic purpose nor seek to capture territory. Rather, their impact is affective: to spread terror to disrupt the workings of the modern city.